:

As I was walking in the Briennerstrasse, not far from the
Bayersdorf Palace, I saw a veiled lady, wearing a black gown
and carrying a fan, coming towards me. Something flashed
across my vision, and I suddenly stood still, completely
dazzled by the eyes into which I stared, and which shone
from a pale countenance that lit up with a laughing
expression at my bewilderment. Then she swept past me; and
I, forgetting what my governess had said about looking
round, stared after her until she disappeared.... "That,"
said my father, when I reached home and recounted my
adventure, "must have been Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer."

The next evening little Fraeulein von Kobell saw her again at the Hof
Theatre, where her first appearance before the Munich public was made
on October 10, 1846.

Lola Montez assumed the centre of the stage. She was not
dressed in the customary tights and short skirts of a
ballerina, but in a Spanish costume of silk and lace, in
which shone at intervals a diamond. It seemed as if fire
darted from her wonderful blue eyes, and she bowed like one
of the Graces at the King in the royal box. She danced after
the manner of her country, bending on her hips and
alternating one posture with another, each rivalling the
former one in beauty.

While she was dancing she held the attention of all;
everybody's eyes followed her sinuous movements, now
indicative of glowing passion, now of frolicsomeness. Not
until she ceased her rhythmic swayings was the spell
interrupted. The audience went mad with rapture, and the
entire dance had to be repeated over and over again.

Ludwig, ensconced in the royal box, could not take his eyes off her.
During an _entr'acte_ he scribbled a verse:

Happy movements, clear and near,
Are in thy living grace.
Supple and tender, as a deer
Art thou, of Andalusian race!

"_Wunderschoen!_" declared an admiring aide-de-camp to whom he showed
it.

"_Kolossal!_" echoed a second, not to be outdone in recognising
laureateship.

As, however, the cheers were mingled with a few hisses ("due to the
report that the newcomer was an English Freemason, and wanted to
destroy the Catholic religion"), the next evening the management took
the precaution of filling the pit with a leather-lunged and
horny-handed _claque_. This time the bill consist